USA Twist of fate
This year’s Transpac Race from LA to Honolulu was a return to the usual robust turnouts and enthusiasm of earlier years with plenty of stories to tell about old boats, new boats and the biggest topic of all: weather. To help compress the fleet’s finish times in Hawaii three start dates are used within a week: the slowest boats on Tuesday, the moderate fast boats on Thursday and the fastest monohulls and all the multihulls on Saturday.
This is not a new concept and it works pretty well as long as the weather is somewhat ‘normal’. Then everyone gets in about the same time so they can enjoy the famous Aloha hospitality and maybe enjoy a day or two relaxing in the islands. This year was not normal. The Pacific High that drives the weather in the north Pacific had weakened and slid north, prompting teams to eye the shorter rhumbline and great circle paths to Hawaii, some- thing rarely done. The usual pattern is to have a high centred inter- secting the rhumbline, forcing you never to get north of the 1020mb isobar and dive south to go fast towards the trade winds. The first two fleets had fitful light airs getting out of LA, but soon enough were out in the strong coastal northerlies. Then the wind started to lighten; everyone’s GRIB files were now indicating not to dive south in search of more wind so most teams opted to stay north and keep reaching – their results in fleet standings were the strongest, filling the whole top 20 in corrected time. In contrast, the last starters – the fastest monohulls and three MOD 70s – had it bad. Not only was there light pressure on the coast, but most took a few days to break free into the usually reliable northerlies. Roy Disney’s team on his Andrews 68 Pyewacket has some of the best talent in Pacific ocean racing and one day they managed only 50 miles in 24 hours… The MOD 70s did manage to break free and started to show some progress but then the early leader – Jason Carroll’s Argo – pulled out with engine trouble. This left Justin Shaffer’s Orion – in original class configuration – and Giovanni Soldini’s Maserati in a match race. Yet the Italians were never much of a threat: the con- tainer with their race sails and foils was still stuck in US Customs… Meanwhile, Bill McKinley’s Ker 46 Denali had been itching to get back out to finish what they started in 2021, when an inexplic- able fracture in their rig just minutes into the race forced them to withdraw. So in 2023 this team – from Michigan and used to racing on the freshwater Great Lakes – came loaded. With a powerful triple-headsail configuration to take advantage of the reaching conditions, and the right boat design with solid right- ing moment and the Ker hull with its form stability, not only did they leg it away from most of their class rivals (being Santa Cruz 50s and 52s) but they came up fast on the slower early starters. Eventually they passed them all in the final few hundred miles and earned the ‘First Monohull to Finish’ award with an elapsed time of 8d 16h 12m – a time more typical of a ULDB Sled or TP52. But this is not the famous Barn Door Trophy – that goes to the monohull with the lowest elapsed time, which this year was Sebastien Moshayedi’s Bakewell-White 100 Rio100, probably the only 100-footer on the planet still with a fixed keel and all-manual systems – all left in place to qualify for another trophy they won, the Merlin Trophy. Their elapsed time of 7d 13h 16m was unchal- lenged this year by any similar-sized competition but it was more than a full day slower than their time in 2019 (a ‘normal’ year). But as the Australian supermaxi owners discovered, having the biggest boat in town can get lonely once the initial excitement wears off, and Moshayedi admitted they’re getting ‘a bit bored’ with the occasional racing they do on the California coast; now they are con- sidering taking their show elsewhere… So watch out, you non-US event organisers, we’ll see if Bouwe Bekking, a watch captain on this team, can get some plans kicked into gear. Otherwise, the racing was pretty good in some classes, even among the fast boats once the breeze finally filled in for them – they were just not dominating the headlines as they usually do. A twist of fate from the weather.
We’ll see if there are any changes ahead for the next 53rd edition which will be held, like clockwork, in July 2025. Dobbs Davis
SEAHORSE 35
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